The Gospel offers a man a life. Never offer a man a thimbleful of
Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest,
or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more
abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore
abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in enterprise for the
alleviation and redemption of the world. Then only can the Gospel take
hold of the whole of a man, body, soul and spirit, and give to each
part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the current
Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's nature. They offer
peace, not life; faith, not Love; justification, not regeneration. And
men slip back again from such religion because it has never really
held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and
gladder life-current than the life that was lived before. Surely it
stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love of
the world.
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to
live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love.
We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live
to-morrow. Why do we want to live to-morrow? Is it because there is
some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow, and be
with, and love back? There is no other reason why we should live on
than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love
him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love
him and whom he loves, he will live, because to live is to love. Be it
but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go, he
has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand.
Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's
own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might know
Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Love
must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love
is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there
is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason
why in the nature of things Love should be the supreme thing--because
it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal
Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we
die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we
are living now.